Under the Dome Review: "Thicker than Water" - That's Not a Monarch!

I still like the kids the most on "Under the Dome"

So I’ve been struggling all day with this review not really in what to say, but in why I’m saying it at all.  A critic whose name escapes me once wrote that it’s easy to write about good shows and it’s easy to write about bad shows, but the real challenge comes in writing about the mediocre shows.  And Under the Dome is aggressively mediocre.  There’s nothing particularly bad about the show and this week’s episode was actually one of the better ones.  Out of the eight episodes aired so far, I’d put only last week’s and the pilot ahead of it.  But while there hasn’t been anything glaringly wrong with the last couple of episodes, even the things they do right are problematic.  Last night’s episode was a perfect example, as the water boiled over on a number of confrontations the show should have spent half a season building toward.  But because there hasn’t been any real narrative direction in this show, I don’t have any real reason to care about the conflicts that happen, and they’re wrapped up so quickly, that there’s no real reason to care moving forward.

A constant theme of my reviews from the season so far has been the startling lack of urgency from any of the characters trapped in the dome.  It took a week and a nuclear bomb for anybody to realize just how serious trouble they are in is.  The power struggle from the pilot quickly disappeared when Sheriff Duke died and Big Jim seems to be okay just sticking with the status quo.  It wasn’t until last week that Ollie became a big threat and now he too is quickly dispatched just a week later.  Now Barbie seems to be the one stepping up to Big Jim, but what exactly is he stepping up to?  Sure they had differing opinions as to how to end Ollie’s reign, but neither one has been a particularly active force in Chester’s Mill thus far.  Big Jim has been a bit of a menace to people with knowledge of his drug operation, but he’s been pretty passive when it comes to policing the town.  And Barbie’s been more than happy just popping up when he’s needed and fading into the background otherwise.  This seems like the obvious matchup, but I just can’t help thinking, “what exactly are they going to fight over?” 

As with last week, now that Angie’s freed from captivity, I’m largely enjoying the children’s stories more than the adults' (Junior excepted).  This week we get the fallout from Alice’s death as Norrie first blames Joe and then herself for her mother’s death.  This is basically Mackenzie Lintz’s first real acting role and, while she’s not blowing me away by any means, her performance has really been very good.  I completely bought the deflection of her anger on to Joe and her eventual break down as she blamed herself.  I think I enjoy the kids’ scenes most because Joe and Norrie have probably spent more screen time together than anybody else (at least screen time that didn’t involve the disaster of the week) and so I’ve gotten a good sense of that relationship.  Bringing Angie in to the equation has only made the dynamic that much better.  Maybe they could get their own web series spinoff that just involves them exploring the woods, having meaningful conversations, and smashing things into the dome while all the crazy town stuff happens in the background.  I’d watch that show.

In other, less interesting news, the dome plot stalls this week as Joe take Julia to the egg and she has a vision of Joe saying “The monarch will be crowned.”  We’re lead to believe this refers to Angie since we get a nice close-up of her butterfly tattoo, which is decidedly NOT A MONARCH.  Seriously?  How does that make any sense?

Small issues aside, if this is what Under the Dome was every week, it would be a perfectly fine summer show.  I don’t know that I’d have room for it during the season, but at this level of quality it’s a perfectly acceptable show, if just incredibly average.

A couple spare thoughts –

Junior still sucks, no matter whose side he’s on or pretending to be on.

Supply shortages are definitely causing problems now, so I fully expect there to be a magic supply drop next week to completely solve that issue.

So thoughts? Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV

The Newsroom Review: "News Night with Will McAvoy" - Baba-Booey Motherf***er

Will spends an entire episode behind the desk on "The Newsroom"

This is the show I’ve been waiting to see.  15 episodes into the series and they’ve finally put together a show that abandons all the worst parts of The Newsroom and focuses on what they do best: making the news.  Gone are the love triangles and speechifying.  Instead we get an hour told subtly in real time, from the open of Will’s show to its close.  We don’t spend the entire show watching the production, as several other stories play out, but watching everybody at work, doing their jobs well (with one notable exception) makes for fascinating television that Sorkin could write well in his sleep. 

The framing of the show splits the cast off into four different groups for the most part.  Will and Mackenzie are together producing “News Night,” Jim and Maggie are stuck at a computer waiting for the George Zimmerman 911 call to download, Charlie gets a visit from a Navy spy, and Don talks Sloan off the edge following the release of nude photos her ex-boyfriend took.  The last plot point was slightly cringe-inducing, especially given two of the cast members’ experience with similar situations, but Munn and Sadoski play things marvelously.  I much more enjoy the dynamic of Don and Sloan as friends as opposed to Sloan as the smitten kitten.  And the finale in which Sloan takes her vengeance (pic of her ex-boyfriend’s bloody face and all) was probably a bit contrived, but it kept well within Sloan’s character.

Watching Will and Mac make the news is a pretty impressive feat.  Their conversations during the commercial breaks are just sparkling and, while the progression of Will’s dad from ambulance phone call to death is perhaps a bit predictable, there’s no doubting the sincerity and emotion from both Will and Mac.  We also get more of Will’s frustration with being insulted on Twitter.  Will is a prideful, prideful man with more than a little Walter White in him, though I doubt he’s going to be blowing up any nursing homes anytime soon. 

Jerry is absent this week, but we still get a good bit of movement in the Genoa story.  Charlie is visited by an old Navy source who is still a spy and is trying to wring information out of Charlie about why Jerry’s poking into Genoa.  While never explicitly saying it, he certainly implies that Genoa was not a standard operation.  I’m becoming more and more convinced that the “News Night” crew actually gets this story right, but they have to disavow it (and fire Jerry) for reasons unrelated to the actual truth of the story.  There is just too much smoke for this to turn out to be nothing.  I was skeptical at first, about how this whole story would play out.  It felt like giving us the end at the beginning was going to drain all the drama, but I’m far more invested in this story right now than in any of the personal drama.

Jim and Maggie are stuck this week, so to speak, impatiently waiting for the Zimmerman recording to download.  This gives them plenty of opportunities to talk, but it feels a little wasted as the only real character development we get is the affirmation that Maggie is still screwed up (and has pulled at least one all-night bender).  Their scenes aren’t bad by any means, but it all feels a bit shallow and is mostly setup for Maggie botching the edit of the 911 call.  Mirroring what happened at NBC News, Maggie cuts the 911 operator’s question to Zimmerman regarding Trayvon Martin’s race, making it seem like he was saying “he looks black” without provocation when, in fact, he was responding to the 911 operator’s question.  This is the good side of Monday Morning Quarterbacking the news.  Sorkin clearly lays exactly how this sort of scenario could happen and then leaves it up to the viewer to decide if what Maggie did was accidental or intentional.  Maggie obviously can’t be fired, though, like the NBC producer was in real life, so the mistake is quickly discovered and corrected at episode’s end.  It might have been nice to see her get in serious trouble over the incident, but having two concurrent investigations might be too much.

This is easily the best that The Newsroom has been in its brief history.  It seamlessly blends drama with the news while mostly eschewing Sorkin’s worst tendencies as a writer.  I don’t know that I’m exactly hopeful this will continue, but the fact that The Newsroom is actually capable of this level of storytelling is heartening at the very least.

A couple of spare thoughts –

The Tyler Clementi stuff was probably the weakest aspect of the episode since it didn’t serve any purpose other than to allow Sorkin to speechify about, well, something.

This review’s title comes from the crew’s ferreting out of an attempt to get on the air by two callers purporting to be trapped in the rubble of an explosion in Syria.  It seemed ridiculous that someone in that scenario would call a news station and it eventually becomes clear why.  Mackenzie’s quick takedown of the callers combined with another producer’s witty retort (see above) give the episode an amusing closing number. 

Breaking Bad Review: The Top Eleven Moments from the First Five Seasons

Please just watch this show.  It's so great.

For the past five years, Breaking Bad has been one of—if not the best—shows on television.  The series has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Drama in every season but its first, writers’ strike-truncated season.  Bryan Cranston has created a pantheon character in Walter White, for which he’s been rewarded with four Lead Actor nominations and two wins.  Aaron Paul has risen from comedic sidekick to truly deserving co-lead and he, also, has been justly rewarded with four Supporting Actor nominations and two wins.  The rest of the cast has garnered five Emmy nominations, the writers two, and the directors four as well.  Mad Men may have put AMC on the map and The Walking Dead may get all the viewers, but Breaking Bad has been constantly outperforming expectations and, above all, always changing and trying new things.  I would easily say that it was the best show on television during its third and fourth seasons and could easily say the same about the last season (or last half-season), were we not now ten months removed from those episodes with a brilliant run of Game of Thrones in between. 

However you want to shake it, a genre-defining, pantheon drama is leaving the airwaves in eight short weeks and, with the finale airing this coming Sunday, I wanted to look back at my favorite moments from the series.  I won’t be reviewing the show because I don’t have the time to watch each episode twice and I don’t want to spend my one airing taking copious notes.  This is a show I love being engrossed in, and that’s how I intend to enjoy these final eight episodes.  But in honor of the show’s final season, I wanted to walk through my ten eleven favorite scenes.  And since I couldn’t keep it to ten, there’s no way I’m going to rank them, so we’ll just go through in chronological order, starting with:

Season 1, Episode 1: “Pilot” – The Opening Scene

http://vimeo.com/18473433

A pair of pants flutters down onto a dirt road before being run over by a roaring RV.  At the wheel, a man wearing nothing but a gas mask and tighty-whities.  To his right, another man in a gas mask.  The driver stops, grabs a gun and a camcorder, records a tearful goodbye to his wife and son, and steps into the road, gun aimed steadily outward.  The in media res opening has been overused in recent years, but damn if this isn’t a perfect variation on the form.  It’s also a perfect encapsulation of what Breaking Bad was in its first two seasons (a black comedy) with what it would become later (a supremely tense drama). Sorry for no embed on this one, but YouTube didn't have the full scene.

Season 1, Episode 2: “Cat’s in the Bag” – Jesse fails to follow directions

Speaking of black comedy, Jesse’s decision to use the porcelain bathtub rather than a plastic tub (as Walt precisely instructed)  order to dispose of a dead body with hydrofluoric acid has disastrous, but hilarious results.  Breaking Bad occasionally employs a “Caper of the Week” structure and, while Walt’s capers are usually successful in later seasons, the early episodes saw an awful lot of brilliant failures, meaning the show could be incredibly funny even as it was incredibly dark.

Season 3, Episode 7: “One Minute” – One Minute

I really wish I could find this entire scene, because the action sequence that follows this video is just spectacular.  But the fact that one of the tensest scenes in five years can come from a man sitting alone in his car for two minutes is a pretty great testament to how fantastic everybody involved with this show is.  This scene isn’t as good as it is without spectacular acting, directing, music, or cinematography.  And while only director Michelle MacLaren has ever been recognized (she was nominated for an Emmy for both this episode and season five’s “Gliding Over All”), this scene perfectly shows how well everybody involved works together. 

Season 3, Episode 12: “Half Measures” = “Run!”

Bryan Cranston gave a great interview last year detailing how different his interpretations of Walter White can be from creator Vince Gilligan’s.  And nowhere is that better exemplified than in the closing scene of the penultimate episode of season three.  Cranston played the part as though Walter was still hesitant about getting his hands dirty in the drug game.  But the way the scene is edited, Walter is strong, loyal, and single-minded in protecting not just Jesse, but himself and his operation as well.  This is the moment when the character sheds the mask of Walter White he’s been wearing and reveals himself as Heisenberg, the drug lord.

Season 4, Episode 1: “Box Cutter” – Gus strips down

Another scene killed by the vagaries of YouTube, this isn’t even the best part of the closing minutes of the fourth season premiere.  The scene in total is four minutes long and details the meticulous undressing of Gus Fring (in all his fastidiousness), the death of Victor, and then (AND THEN!) silently shows Gus dress again, as smart and perfect as ever.  Season three was written a bit on the fly, with Gus replacing the Salamanca cousins as the Big Bad halfway through.  But it wasn’t until this scene that we saw how ruthless and vicious the Chicken Man could be.  And the fourth season gave Giancarlo Esposito the material to create one of television’s classic villains.

Season 4, Episode 6: “Cornered” - I am the one who knocks!

This scene, you guys.  This scene.  I mean what do I even say?  If ever there was a mission statement for this show, it is “I am the one who knocks!”  It could have been said in the first couple of seasons and it would have been taken as Walt’s blustering and trying to make more of his position than he’s truly earned.  But uttered here, after multiple attempts on his life have kind of made his point, it is as much a threat as anything else.  This one statement sets the stage for the rest of season four and the first half of season five, with Walter showing, for the first time to another person, what he truly thinks of himself and his place in his world. 

Season 4, Episode 11: “Crawl Space” - Walt breaks down

Walt has finally reached the end.  He’s forever ruined his partnership with Gus.  Jesse has turned on him as well.  It’s only a matter of time before a target is placed firmly on his back.  Out of options he decides to run, but needs to raid his stash in order to buy new lives for his family.  Unfortunately, Skyler’s already given the money to Ted to help him pay off the IRS and keep the Feds from investigating her and their money laundering operation.  What follows is a piece of pure brilliance as Walt completely loses his mind in the crawl space beneath their house.  Bryan Cranston submitted this episode as his Emmy episode last year, for obvious reasons, and probably would have won had the voters not gotten Homeland fever (though Damian Lewis was deserving in his own right).

Season 4, Episode 13: “Face Off” – Ding! Ding! Ding!

Mark Margolis was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Tio Salamanca and submitted this episode.  Let me clarify.  Mark Margolis was nominated for an Emmy for his role as the mute Tio Salamanca and submitted an episode in which he doesn’t utter a single word.  He did have a speaking role in some flashbacks earlier in the year, but it was the intensity of his facial expressions that received the most attention, especially in his final scene of the series.  It was just a masterful performance by Margolis and a fitting end for a pair of great characters.

Season 5, Episode 1: “Live Free or Die” – Yeah, bitch!  Magnets!

This may seem like kind of a random selection, but I like it because it shows the humor Breaking Bad is still capable of.  The excitement Jesse shows for electromagnets is infectious, and makes the show more than just another somber drama.

Season 5, Episode 4: “Fifty-One” – Skyler’s shining moments

Breaking Bad is often at its best when showing us the consequences of Walt’s actions (see also: “Crawl Space) and here we finally see the toll his lifestyle has taken on Skyler – First as she finds peace in the deep end of their pool and second as she admits to Walt that she has no plan, she’s simply waiting for him to die.  It’s such an obvious statement but still just devastating.  Skyler’s gotten a lot of crap over the years  by people who mistakenly believe Walter White is the hero, but here we see just what he’s done to her and how she’s decided to cope. 

Season 5, Episodes 8: “Gliding Over All” – It all unravels

Walter’s out.  He’s done.  He’s won.  He’s bested his enemies, beaten cancer, and amassed a fortune.  All is well.  But just as it’s always been, Walter’s pride does him in.  He just can’t let go of Gale’s gift, which acknowledges his greatness.  As the saying goes, “Pride goeth before the fall.”  And if ever there was a textbook example, it is Walter White.

There are many more great moments, but these ten eleven stand out as my favorites.  No matter how it ends, Breaking Bad will go down as one of the all-time great dramas.  Every episode is available on Netflix and AMC is marathoning the fourth and fifth seasons starting at 1:00 on Friday afternoon.  If you have a chance to catch the first eight episodes of the fifth season (the coming episodes are considered the second half of the fifth season even airing ten months later), I can’t recommend enough that you do so and watch the final eight episodes as they air.  This is one of the best shows on television, and I’d hate for you to miss out.

Under the Dome Review: "Imperfect Circles" - Domes All the Way Down

Joe and Norrie "experiment" with the dome.

Shortly after Under the Dome’s pilot aired, I made the argument that the show should never explain the dome, concentrating instead on the people inside the dome and what happens to them.  I didn’t want this show to turn into Lost (or The Event or Flash Forward, though Lost was far better than those two), a show in which so much time was spent trying to decipher the mysteries that people often forgot to think about the characters, which were the best part of the show.  Likewise, with people wondering about the dome (and people who’d read the book complaining about the ending), I believed the show would be better off focusing more on the characters and less on the dome.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the characters in Under the Dome are almost universally dull and the plots so clichéd and worn (seriously, every plot so far this season, down to the early delivery, was used before on Jericho), that I was relieved to see somebody on the show actually caring about the dome and want to know more about it.  So I actually enjoyed the various ways Joe and Norrie tried to learn more about the dome.  Making out while touching the dome was cute, though I suspect Joe’s trigonometry skills are being exaggerated.  Either way, the two end up at the center of the dome, where they find a smaller dome holding what looks like a black egg.  I’m kind of hoping they keep exploring, though given the show’s renewal, I’m a little hesitant to think they’ll actually explain the dome this season.

The rest of the episode seems like it should have been eventful, but it is so filled with out-of-nowhere stories, predictable plots, and unexplainable scenarios that it’s impossible to care.  Obviously, the big story is Julia’s pregnant friend, whom we’ve never seen before, stopping by to borrow some yogurt just in time to hallucinate her deployed sailor husband, touch the dome, and go into labor.  Mightily convenient.  Since Alice is the only doctor in town, they obviously end up there, where she gives birth, Alice bonds psychically with the baby (yeah that happened), and then dies.  Why does she die?  The episode implies that it was due to her need for insulin, but that can’t be it since she just a got a new vial a day or two ago.  As I’ve said before, the problem with this show isn’t that people are dying.  The problem is that good horror doesn’t just randomly off people.  Good horror creates a scenario in which the characters have a reason to die at any moment, and then it kills one.  That is good horror.  This is not.

In predictable plot news, farmer Ollie makes a power play on Big Jim, which doesn’t go well for Ollie’s redshirt, assigned to guard the propane.  This was the story I expected out of Jim and Duke in the pilot, it’s just a shame that it’s taken half the season to finally get to it.  Also predictable is crazy Junior crazily shooting one of the Dundee brothers who tried to rape Angie.  Making him a deputy was probably the dumbest move on a show filled with dumb moves. 

And in unexplainable scenarios, somehow Rose’s body hasn’t been moved from the diner so Angie has to bury her with the help of Joe’s friend Ben.  There’s no explanation for why Angie or Barbie didn’t tell somebody about Rose.  Nor is there any reason given for why people aren’t trying to eat at the diner, given that they’ve been open this entire time and there’s apparently still food there that Rose felt the need to protect.  None of it really makes sense, except that it gets Angie and Ben together which, ultimately, leads Angie back to Joe for a heartfelt reunion.  I’m honestly finding the kids on Under the Dome much more interesting than the adults, which is something I never say about a show.

So, halfway through the first season of Under the Dome, where do we sit?  The show still has trouble being scary, the plots are mundane and well-worn, and there isn’t a single character I’m truly afraid for.  This show is pretty clearly a disaster procedural when it needs more serialization.  I think there is some promise moving forward, but I can’t honestly say that I expect that promise to be fulfilled.  Oh well.

So thoughts?  Comments?  Just want to tell me my blog sucks?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.